A book of this kind is eloquent testimony to the continuing power of the self-serving dogma on development constructed in the North Atlantic over the course of the last three centuries. Whether under the rubric of the Black Legend, the White Man's Burden, Manifest Destiny, or the pseudoscientific abstractions of post-World War II “modernization theory,” the assumptions of that dogma have been the same. Development in what is today called the Third World has been thwarted by a premodern cultural and institutional legacy that impedes receptiveness to, acquisition of, and propagation of the modern values that would foster a process of change recapitulating the developmental success story of the capitalist nations of the North Atlantic Basin. Safford confronts this dogma on what would seem to be its strongest ground. His case study focuses on Colombia—that most traditional and Catholic of the major Latin American nations—during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period of economic malaise and political chaos. The result is an important and richly detailed study that largely succeeds in demonstrating, in Safford's cautious words, that “value attachments in Latin American society have been more ambiguous than they are generally represented to be” (p. 11). Put more forcefully and positively, Safford makes a strong case for the proposition that economic, geographic, and social structures themselves help to mold the values often attributed solely to institutional and cultural legacies in Latin America, and that it is these structural conditions that exercise the strongest influence on the success or failure of elite efforts to foster technological progress.

Economic historians are accustomed to treating 1930 as a landmark date in the development of Latin America. The onset of the Great Depression was an abrupt external shock to every country in the region, cutting off traditional export markets and making it exceedingly difficult to secure consumer goods, replacement parts, and new capital equipment in return. Many countries began experiments in national self-sufficiency, turning to policies that came to be identified, especially after World War II, as import substitution industrialization (ISI). Although these experiments were sometimes disappointing, they represented a watershed in the evolution of national economic systems.

The social and psychological consequences of economic development have frequently been ignored in social science research in Third World countries, and most comprehensive analyses of the problem do not attach much importance to individual-level characteristics, such as the psychopathological outcomes of modernizing experiences. Migration and cultural change, which are closely related to the broader development process, traditionally have been viewed by social psychiatric research as independent variables associated with mental disorders (Murphy 1976).

Traditionally, Western scholars have spoken about “the” Soviet view of this or that question—even about “the” Soviet ideology with respect to it—and hence they have considered it legitimate to draw quotations from a wide range of persons and types of sources in order to assemble a composite summary of that view. Even if it has been recognized that there must be private differences of opinion among Soviet officials and specialists, it has usually been assumed that the censorship prevents any from being expressed in public. This assumption is simply incorrect. In the words of Brezhnev, “a party and state leader. cannot consider himself the sole and indisputable authority in all areas of human activity. ” While jealously guarding their own right of ultimate decision, Soviet leaders now talk about problems being solvable only by “collective reason,” and insist that “it is necessary to listen to specialists and scholars, and, moreover, not only of one orientation or school.”

Economic and political relations of the soviet union with the countries of Latin America are on the increase. Annually expanding cultural and scientific relations serve to stimulate the growing interest of the Soviet people in Latin America's rich historical background, its distinctive culture, and the present day problems of that part of the world. Russian interest in Latin America extends over a long period of time. I should like to emphasize, therefore, that this interest in Latin America and the life of its people is not a passing fancy and did not develop overnight. This interest has its own history. Permit me to recount a few facts.

Contacts Between Latin American Studies Centers in the European countries have in the past been sporadic and informal. In order to make best use of existing scholarly resources a far greater degree of cooperation and interchange should exist, both at a national and a continental level. It was with a view to examining the present situation and to discussing the institutional bases for a program of cooperation that representatives of Latin American Studies Centers from France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Western Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries met in Brussels on May 5-7, 1969. The Conference was sponsored by the Instituto Latinamericano de Relaciones Internacionales (ILARI), represented by its director, Luis Mercier Vega, editor of the review Aportes, and François Bourricaud of the University of Paris. Latin American participants included Gino Germani of Harvard and Buenos Aires, Aldo E. Solari of CEPAL and Montevideo, and Domingo M. Rivarola of Paraguay. Kalman Silvert of New York University represented the U.S.A.

This address to the Seminar discussed the social and cultural aspects of dwellings in urban life in Mexico City during the early nineteenth century. The studies were based on information obtained from the national census of 1811. After a brief review of the census papers, the following were offered as the major obstacles to interpreting the information contained: